Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the it-burns-mommy dept.
squidgy writes "The BBC are reporting on a system that can superimpose images over your vision using small lasers beaming the images directly onto the retina. This is already being used in the car manufacturing industry. You too could soon have T101 vision."
249 comments
The real innovation
by
andy666
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Is the use of adaptive optics for imaging the retina. This involves using deformable mirrors or micromirror arrays to sense how the retina deforms a wavefront.
Re:The real innovation
by
Glonoinha
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· Score: 4, Interesting
You guys miss the whole groundbreaking aspect of this? The HUD! This is what we have been waiting for - heads up display and it is finally (almost) affordable.
For those of you familiar with the feedback in the Star Wars Galaxies HUD, envision coupling this thing with a tiny GPS module - now you could superimpose a top down map of the surrounding area (zoom in / out), heading, speed, waypoints. Couple this with the RFID encoding every person is going to have in the next few years and it could actually accept data from the MCP and put every person's name over their head, plus make available a quick lookup of statistical information (age, date of birth, relatives, occupation, phone number, etc..) Be able to interact with Google, MapQuest, etc in real time everywhere you go.
Re:The real innovation
by
Knetzar
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· Score: 5, Funny
Finally, the people who do nothing but play MMORPGs will feel comfortable in the real world.
Re:The real innovation
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Funny
But will they realize when they've stopped playing and re-entered the real world? As I'm walking down the street, will some teenager try to cast a fireball at me or chop my head off with his zirkonium katana of +5 damage?
Microvision actually came out with this stuff back in '96 or '97; I don't recall them ever mentioning adaptive optics. It's just a straightforward adaptation of the system used by supermarket scanners, although at much lower power.
Actually, the Nomad system has been out for a couple of years; I'm curious what led the BBC to pick it up now. Back in '97, Microvision was proposing putting a laser display into cell phones and Palms, but looks like that hasn't gone anywhere.
After they snagged that Air Force contract, I thought MV would extend their line a little, maybe go out and search for a retail vendor to bring their color system to the real world. It's been really frustrating to watch these guys sit on the tech that could make wearable computers and HMDs a household item.
Oh, and the 'zero refresh rate' guys? It's _still_ too low-power to do any damage; you'd just see a single pixel.
-- -- Let him who is without spelling error ignite the first flame --
Apparently SF is not read anymore. Only "SciFi" like Andromeda and Star Trek stays in the collective memory, it seems. And those are derivative of much older and far more literate work.
Heinlein, Asimov, DeCamp, Pohl, Anderson, Campbell. Kuttner, Clarke, Stephenson, Gibson... all that history, all that work in vain? No one reads anymore?
This is OUR history! I grew up reading stories from the 30's, 40's and 50's. The source material for the people who grew up and built the present world. Snow Crash pretty much predicted the present so well that it doesn't even read like fiction.
I guess I'm spooked because I can't find people of a certain younger age who read SF anymore. A culture is built on stories, and geek culture is losing its own.
I used to read SF stories from the 50's - we used to go to down to the second-hand bookstores/jumble-sales and buy up stacks of books real cheap. If I had the time, I'd build an online website listing these stories, characters and plots so they wouldn't be forgotten. Also because, I'm trying to track down a few stories I remember reading at high school.
Not entirely true. I realized that in order to be a well-rounded geek, I needed to read some Asimov (how I managed to go 26 years without doing so is a mystery - perhaps I wasn't ready). I started with Prelude and have now begun the 5th book (in the original ordering), Foundation and Earth.
I think the problem is that you are dismayed by the general masses. If you remember Asimov's books, he doesn't seem to put much stock in the intelligence of people as their size increases. x being population (mob size): lim[as x->Inf] Avg.Int(x) -> 3 (that's for all you D&D freaks!)
I bet you that there are a lot of nerds and children of nerds who are still picking up the "classics." Don't kid yourself, SF has never been dominant in the mainstream.
--
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
> Anyone else immediately think of the old "set refresh rate to zero" hack that used to be able to burn out monitors?
Yeah. Someone else has done all the hard work. All I wanted was for you to set the refresh rate to zero, turn the thing around 180 degrees, and mount the frickin' thing on a shark. Is that too much to ask?
Re:Yikes
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Fear not Catbeller!
You are not alone. Many, many people read SF and appreciate the vast range of mind-expanding ideas of writers like Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke and Gibson (... even in a faraway place like Greece where I live)
Herbert. How did you miss Herbert out from that list. Dune is far richer as a book than film or mini series will ever capture. His non-Dune stuff is amazing also.
It's too simple;-)
I think there are lots of cost effective methods to become blind, deaf and lame, without any "high tech" solutions;-)
P.S. I like my headphones;)
Depends on the chat room and how much lotion you have handy.
--
Ryosen One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
The only important question
by
triptolemeus
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· Score: 3, Funny
One will I get X-ray vision?
-- The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
Re:The only important question
by
Analogy+Man
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· Score: 3, Interesting
In effect for instances were you are looking at something of known shape you get just that!
Suppose you are trying to put a small screw in a small threaded hole..but there are other parts as well as your arm and hand in the way. With this system you could see the hole virtually.
The trick would be having the system generate the geometry for the screw...or your fingers.
-- When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Re:The only important question
by
CodeMonkey4Hire
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· Score: 1
pr0n will never be the same....
--
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
Re:The only important question
by
F34nor
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· Score: 1
Not only that but these guys also make a pin hole microscope so you could put a pipet into a cell wall.
Re:The only important question
by
chadjg
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· Score: 1
Given the importance of x-ray vision technologies to our adolescent fantasy lives, I think the above poster might have been going for funny, not insightful.
Cool - now I can have a "You've got mail" banner scroll across my field of view and cool rotatey vector envelope icon will appear at bottom right of everything I look at...
Re:"You've got mail!"
by
Lumpy
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· Score: 5, Funny
Nahh more fun is to run 30 copies of Xeyes and start running around screaming "STOP STARING AT ME!"
-- Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:"You've got mail!"
by
mausmalone
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· Score: 1, Funny
You wish! By the time this gets relased, advertising and AOL in general will be much much more annoying than that!
-- -=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Re:"You've got mail!"
by
Analogy+Man
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· Score: 2, Informative
I was really excited about this technology until they started onto application to cell phones. The track record of that industry to make something useful (a mobile phone with a list of names and numbers) into a convoluted hodge-podge of features hiding the useful features 4 layers down in the menus makes me shudder considering how they would implement this.
-- When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Re:"You've got mail!"
by
RealityMogul
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· Score: 1
Your comment made me get worried, in another way... one word:
Advertising
Give advertisers a chance to get their foot in the door, then this would be it... I mean talk about something you can't exactly ignore. Might just be me getting a little paranoid, but you never know.
Mind, I just thought of the scene where Homer Simpson when he is driving down the road and does an emergency stop to look at every roadside banner advert... it would be even more freaky with this tech!
Someone will be seriously hurt if I get AOL crap embedded in my personal VR setup. There's gonna be a whupping for sure.
If the next few generations of these devices turn out to be cheap and durable, they will be built into glasses. People will wake up and unconsciously assume that the display will be there. After a few years, I think that people will nauseated and annoyed if it malfunctions.
And if it becomes so ingrained into our psyches, the spamming scume will definitely want to get to it. Bluejacking these things could lead to trouble.
I'm just reading Peter F Hamilton's new book, "Pandora's Star". And the people in the book have exaxtly this sort of thing.
Everyone has an implanted computer which they can control neurally, and a "virtual vision" display. They have the equivalent of spam filters for adverts and unwanted messages/email-v2. I think this is the way it'll go. There will be the same old unending battle between spam (in any form) and the requisite spam filters.
"Well, officer, I wasn't really driving unsafely on purpose. Okay, so I was reading my cellphone virtual screen and Tina, my AOL buddy, she sent me this joke that was SO funny, and while I was reading it, I hit the semi. Can't you let me off with a warning? Tee-hee. [hair twirl]"
Military Application
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The article mentions the military operations in Iraq. I think that a neat military use would be to couple this with a heat sensing utility so that while on the field they could see their opponents better.
It'd be like playing COD or 1942. w00t!
- AC Since this is frontpage I'm not going to roll the Karma dice... Sorry Mods!
-- Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts
If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Does this work for everyone?
by
AtariAmarok
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Does this work for everyone who has vision? Or will it only work for some, like traditional 3D, or those few who could actually play the Nintendo Virtual Boy without getting a headache?
-- Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Re:Does this work for everyone?
by
MoronGames
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· Score: 1
I think the problem with the virtual boy was that it had two seperate screens, and your eyes had to make it in to one image. I'm assuming this laser thing would have to do it the same way. Project two different images to your eyes and allow your eyes to combine them. Better buy an extra bottle of tylenol!
-- hey!
Re:Does this work for everyone?
by
Glonoinha
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· Score: 1
I think it is a monocle, meaning it only goes over one eye.
Re:Does this work for everyone?
by
AllenChristopher
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· Score: 1
The virtual boy had two major problems. The first was that it was trying to approximate a focal distance of, say, five metres, but with poor quality optics, housing, and a wide range of users.
Something that's supposed to go on the eyes of kids and adults? Very difficult to make. You have to make it very easy to adjust the width of the spacing of the screens, you have to be able to hold that, and you have to have good calibration techniques.
This is an entirely different thing. Though it is a monocle, if a binocular version were made, it would be far easier to adjust properly than the virtual boy, because you can see through to the real world.
"Put test pattern poster on wall. Stand five metres from wall. The test pattern projected in the HUD will appear to move closer to you and farther away. Push the button when it appears to be the same distance away as the test pattern."
That's just engineering. There are plenty of HMD now that don't give the user a headache from stereo issues, though you DO get a headache from the weight.
The second problem the virtual boy had was that the image was only red and was on a very dark background. If you stare at a red line for a long period of time, when you look away the spot where the line was will be cyan... the brain says "This spot is much less red than expected."
You can see this with a line on a card... better yet, you're in front of a computer now. Pop up an image editor, draw something in red on black, view full screen, and just stare for a few minutes. Then look at a white piece of paper.
The virtual boy was really bad for this because the eyes were almost entirely enclosed. It's not dangerous at all, but it freaked people out....they thought this prosaic optical illusion was "damage" to their eyes that would build up.
That issue shouldn't be such a big problem here because the subjective brightness of the red line will be about the same as the background you can see behind it. I'd expect the same incidence of green afterimages that I'd expect with normal red lines in the real world. It will happen, but that's just eyes for you.
Oh, I lied. Third problem.... there was just no good way to hold the virtual boy in front of the eyes. Even if it were calibrated properly, craning the neck forward to look into the viewer caused more headaches than the stereo issues.
Re:Does this work for everyone?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Actually, I kinda liked how easy the Virtual Boy was to use. I used to lie down on my back on the couch with a small pillow and balance the thing over my eyes. The foam shroud would hold it pretty steady unless I made a sudden movement playing Red Alarm. But if I rested the "feet" on my chest it also kept it more stable. I wish Nintendo (or a competitor) would find a way to bring a color Virtual Boy to market.
Re:Does this work for everyone?
by
RichardX
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· Score: 1
Um... You mean the way humans have two seperate eyes, and the brain has to combine the images from them into a single 3D image?
-- Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
I think this system, or one just like it, was on/. a year or two ago. I remember the obligatory messages from people who thought that laser light in the eye automatically meant you'd go blind.
Sure... single wavelength doesn't mean you'll go blind. But trying to read red ghost-like text constantly for the rest of your life might help. It's like a virtual boy on stereroids! (Assuming the deep red picture with the article is actually how it would look, not just BBC guessing.)
Ok, so I live in a TMAWS, our country is dominated by FOQNE's, I already have an avatar in the Metaverse, this is just one more step closer to Neal's vision.
Now where's my Pizza? It's been 29.43124 minutes!
This isn't new...
by
boomer_rehfield
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· Score: 3, Informative
There was a company from Seattle IIRC that was working with this around 5 to 7 years ago. It's an extremely cool technology though and I was bummed that I never heard anything else beyond that. Glad to hear it's still around.
systems could be incorporated into mobile phones or hand-held computers and appear to the brain as a brightly lit widescreen TV version of what is on the device
I'd sell all my stock in companies making televisions and monitors, if I had any. Get the benefits of a monster plasma TV without taking up the real estate and, at about $4000, without spending as much.
-- The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
I'd be more interested in using it as environment space.
I want my nice 19" full color display in front of me, then I want to put on one of these and with a head position sensor, so that I can have the area around me be an extended destop visible only in monochrome. I could leave windows lying all around outside the bounds of my monitor.
Bonus perihiperial, some kind of machine vision system that will let me slide those windows around using my hands.
When I was in the Marines way back in 1989, I read about tests with little retina-mapped lasers for grunts. It never caught on, but the technology was there and it was being tested. What is new here? Are they casing the old technology in cool pastel colors now?
-- The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Re:Isn't this old news?
by
Lord+Bitman
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Miliary -> Industry -> Consumer You are here --^ ^-- We are awaiting this one
-- -- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Re:Isn't this old news?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
This is the same end result achieved through different means.
Such a system could only be useful if it were to be fed live data updates (like bionic-eye style video games) and didn't leave "GAMEOVER" embedded in your retina if you get shot during combat ops.
The laser treatment they are using here is not of the "harmful type," or so they say, but lasers, mirrors, prisms, and the like are notoriously bad company for human organs at this juncture.
"The BBC are reporting on a system that can superimpose images over your vision using small lasers beaming the images directly onto the retina. This is already being used in the car manufacturing industry."
Eeeewww! Does anyone else squirm at the thought of lasers beaming directly into the retina?
Eeeewww! Does anyone else squirm at the thought of lasers beaming directly into the retina?
It makes me squirm about as much as the thought of CNN beaming directly onto my retina. Laser, just like other light sources, can only damage your eyes if enough energy is transfered. Your retinas are made to have light beamed onto them directly, just not light above a cetain intensity.
Steve Mann has been doing this for a while
by
Willard+B.+Trophy
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· Score: 5, Interesting
This looks exactly like Steve Mann'sEyeTap device. Which, incidentally, runs Linux.
Re:Steve Mann has been doing this for a while
by
ByteSlicer
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· Score: 1
'Looks exactly like' is maybe a bit strong. Granted, it is very similar in design. When comparing it with the transparant eyepiece of the Laser Vision system, the EyeTap seems to obstruct the real world image much more. Looking sideways may be impossible with the EyeTap (although I'm not sure of this, since I never got to wear one).
Re:Steve Mann has been doing this for a while
by
Willard+B.+Trophy
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· Score: 1
What Steve could use is some indsutrial design work on his devices. I'm sure they work, but... well, wander about the UofT campus for a bit, and you'll surely meet him.
Re:Steve Mann has been doing this for a while
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Where do you think Steve Mann got his "laser eyetap" from?...go check the serial number on the laser part of his laser eyetap....
Re:I MUST HAVE ONE! NOW!
by
Short+Circuit
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· Score: 1, Funny
Well, if you buy the software upgrade, you can get vector graphics instead of raster. And support for three colors!
Finally the whole world can be a hypertext document.
--
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses.
If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Didn't Wesley Crusher play with this?
by
Wubby
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Didn't he have a game with something like this on ST:TNG. IIRC the whole crew got addicted to some game played like this and Data had to save the ship. That silly Wesley, almost killed everyone again... or was that episode the first time.
(Sorry Wil, had to use the reference, was just too apropos.(Man, I'm a nerd!))
-- Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Re:Didn't Wesley Crusher play with this?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Actually it was Riker who got everyone addicted and Wesley saved the ship.
Re:Didn't Wesley Crusher play with this?
by
Short+Circuit
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· Score: 1
Wesley was the guy who fought its adoption. The device itself was given to Riker by a girl in Risa, with the intention of taking over the Enterprise.
Re:Didn't Wesley Crusher play with this?
by
Psion
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· Score: 1
You silly Trek-Geek! Next thing you know, you'll be telling us all about Lefler's Laws!
Oops...I mean...oh frell!
Re:Didn't Wesley Crusher play with this?
by
Wubby
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· Score: 1
What?? I used a trek reference and got it WRONG! Now the guys are gonna demand I give up my authentic reproduction batleth that i won at a convention in a trivia contest.
Time to refocus on Farscape... Oh frell!
-- Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Harken back to the GPS-sensitive gaming, and you might even be able to do overlays... so that someones character in the game world is overlayed (roughly) on top of them... and you can "battle" in the 3d world.
Would be cool for virtual offices as well.. teleworker shows at the meeting if you have the sunglasses.
-- meh
Car Accident
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Honest, officer. I was driving along and something got in my eye and that's all I remember.
Wait until you get spammed (directly in your eyes) when you're trying to enjoy a ball game (in person).
your sig
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Support the First Amendment: Read at -1.Support the First Amendment: Read at -1.
Eh, no. RTFA (Amendment).
Re:your sig
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Exactly.
Worst. Sig. Ever.
One eye only?
by
Colonel+Angus
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If an image is only being displayed on one eye would there not be some distortion whenever the other eye is open? I put my finger in front of my right eye. Close my right eye and my left eye cannot see it. Close my left eye and my right eye sees it fine. Open both eyes and it's a distorted "see-through" image of my finger. Would a similar effect not happen here or is there some compensation built into the device? I saw no mention of it in the article but perhaps someone has more information.
Re:One eye only?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Have you ever used a microscope? You only you one eye in many of those also.
The reason you see a distorted finger is because your left eye is trying to focus on the finger as well.
You see, you *want* to see through a retinal display, so that's not a problem at all. It's also designed to account for your ability to focus, so it should look like it's further away than it actually is. In short, yes, there's compensation for any distortion.
However, the eye that's getting the feed will adjust to the higher intensity light, killing your night vision in one eye. If it's a monochrome display, which most are, and in red, to boot, you simply won't be able to see much red out of that eye for a while after you stop using it.
I don't know if that leads to any long-term damage, and I'm inclined to say that it shouldn't do anything considerably worse than spending the same amount of time in a dark room staring at a CRT, but i have no professional training to back that up.
-- Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
If there was some way to hijack the optical nerve, grab images from it, process it and get various information, and then overlay it onto our eyes, that'll be awesome!
Combined with the 'take a picture and find where you are' thingy on slashdot (which I can't seem to find), we can immediately find out where we are, and with all the landmarks overlayed over!
Which is undoubtedly cool. And undoubtedly we'll have to wait a couple of years for that to happen.
changing definitions of what is seeing
by
little_prince
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· Score: 1
earlier it used to be -
U C what U want 2 C
now it will be -
U C what U R shown;)
Re:changing definitions of what is seeing
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
What? You'll have to try again. Excuse me, but DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?
Apaches Already Have This
by
darkmeridian
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· Score: 2, Informative
This technology is pretty well-established in the military. Information is painted directly onto the retina for pilots of the Apache helicopter. This data doesn't get faded out and you don't have to look down. Pilots can keep focused on their targets, etc. It's perfectly safe.
-- A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
so was the secret testing they did on people back in the day. It wasn' until birth defects, cancer, and other health issues arose 30, 40, and 50 years later that it was realized what they did to these "volunteers".
Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
misterpies
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· Score: 2, Funny
"Information is painted directly onto the retina"
You mean the light comes into the eye, gets focussed by the cornea and lens, and forms an image on the retina? Wow, that's a new way of seeing things.
-- The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
dave420
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· Score: 0
That's something completely different. That's video projected onto a small bit of glass over one eye, as opposed to a laser projecting directly on a retina. It's a personal HUD, nothing more. It doesn't even involve lasers.
Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
jafuser
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· Score: 1
I'm wondering -- how would this work anyway?
I assume most people can't read text unless they're looking right at it, using the most sensitive part of the retina to recognize the shapes of the words.
Try reading something out of the corner (or even halfway point) of your eye, it's practically impossible or very difficult to do, requiring a lot of concentration.
-- Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Re:Apaches Already Have This
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's perfectly safe.....OW!!! my eye, my eye
Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
RichardX
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· Score: 1
No. He said painted. It's a highly advanced system involving a minature inkjet nozzle. I can't tell you any more because it's classified, and I'd have to kill you. Or paint your eyes.
-- Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Maverick. I've gotta bail out, everything is BLUE!
by
cardoso
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· Score: 3, Funny
Wouldn't be lovelly to face a BSOD while driving at 120Km/h, in a rainy night?
--
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
And That's Why Google...
by
Myriad
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· Score: 3, Funny
Sounds kinda like beer googles, only pricier.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Google's IPO will be a winner.
-- "They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
This is a Big Thing
by
pkaral
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I think it is hard to overestimate the long term impact of this technology, if it lives up to its promises. This could be the final piece in the puzzle needed to make wearable computing a mainstream reality (rather than a thing for visionary geeks). My guess is that within 10 years of the first real massmarket product, we will all be wearing those when working, driving, shopping, etc.
Soon they will have games out for you eye to play. Like in the Next Generation star trek. We will all be part of it.
-- Mark
Could be good for gaming
by
loic_2003
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· Score: 2, Insightful
for FPS games.... If this thing could be tweaked to provide an image for your entire field of vision it would be far superior than those nasty goggles that were used in 'Virtual Reality' systems a few years back. They were simply screens right infront of your eyes. Desert combat and the like would rock if you could use your peripheral vision. It wouldn't be much harder to sense if the eyes have moved and could allow the user to see larger images if they could look to the left and right and have the image scroll along...
Would be interesting to find if it gives headaches to the users like CRT monitors do these days..
Admittedly, it'd be really awesome to have a heads-up display, if this ever becomes available to the public...
But how long before there would be banners and pop-ups? Of course, there'd be restrictions to keep people from getting hit with porn ads whilst driving or anything like that, but imagine if it became used for things like VR Gaming or websurfing.
Think of how much companies would be willing to pay to have their products beamed directly onto your retina... I might be overly pessimistic, but that'd be a pretty uncool situation.
Re:Advertising Nightmare
by
argent
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· Score: 2, Insightful
if you're running an operating system and user interface that lets other people pop stuff up in your field of view while you're driving, then Darwin will accept your sacrifice gladly.
I don't have any problem with "banners and popups", or with spyware or viruses, and I don't use any antivirus software at all...
Putting all the "cook your eyes with high-powered laser" jokes aside, this has several useful applications.
I'd like a subtitle application. A smart application analyses voices and sends subtitles only I can see.
"He's lying".
"She's eager but expecting disappointment"
"They want to buy, at any price".
"He's still lying".
Subtitling conversations is a great thing. But we can go further. GPS is an obvious plug-in. "Go left, now!" "Almost there" "Cops ahead, slow down and hide the bottles".
Next, how about linking this to streaming news sources. I'd never miss another Fark story. Granted, ticker-tape messages scrolling under your line of sight might get boring. But that's what bash.org is for.
I also want the reality-skinning software. This has been briefly touched on in a previous comment. We can go further. Everyone we meet can get their own photoshopped skin. The boss? He gets a moustache and bright red hair. That girl in finance who refuses all your expenses? A sign on her back saying 'Kick Me'.
Finally, I'd like a system of virtual real-world messaging. This works as follows: comments are linked to real spatial cordinates. As you look at the appropriate building or space, you get to read the comments. To keep comments semi-private, you'd have join a server and channel, like irc.
So I think laser-augmented vision has the potential to radically change society.
Of course we have to get around the fried-eye issues first.
I could really do with one of these systems. They say honda already uses them, now if I could only get the same system honda uses I could have an overlay of how my car is running before I blow up another engine.
Hook it into babelfish. HECTAR HECTAR HECTAR HECTAR.
Sinec it's scanning your eye, it can tell where you're looking. You can probably learn to use saccades for feedback pretty quickly.
"I was like having dinner with this guy, and he didn't seem to be paying attention, so I look at his eyes and they're twitching like he was on crack. The bastard was reading slashdot on my date!"
Re:Some uses for this...
by
infolib
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I'd like a subtitle application. A smart application analyses voices and sends subtitles only I can see.
Now what I'd like to see in the display is:
Name: Bob Greenham (92% certainty) Last met: Acme Conference june '06 Current position: Cyan Inc. (99% certainty) "Bob Greenham" found in one mail thread: Spokes for Acme Wheels (July '06, 3 mails)
-- Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Re:Some uses for this...
by
ozbird
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· Score: 5, Funny
I'd like a subtitle application. A smart application analyses voices and sends subtitles only I can see.
"He's lying."
LIAR.
HE'S A LIAR.
HE'LL RAPE YOU.
HE'LL KILL.
YOU KILL HIM FIRST.
Re:Some uses for this...
by
Glonoinha
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· Score: 1
This would be a nice side effect of the Ashcroft RFID Identification bill being pushed through congress - once everybody is carrying RFID and can be uniquely identified by the surrounding sensors this would be a trivial extension to the existing infrastructure. I guess law enforcement might get first dibs, but it would bump up the 92% certainty to about 100% once they work out the kinks.
And when it can be fitted into a standard glasses frame, there are going to be implications for examinations, especially if it has an input mechanism which works on eye movements. "Everyone with glasses, please get them checked on the way in".
Something to remember though. If we have the tags to broadcast our locations while wearing these computers on our heads, the cops will be ahead of us all the way. You won't be able to dodge them, you'll have the ticket scrolling on your eyeballs as soon as you hit 56 on the highway.
Re:Some uses for this...
by
Flyboy+Connor
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· Score: 1
SPAM directly onto your retina? Are you crazy?
Re:Some uses for this...
by
smatt-man
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· Score: 1
Now what I'd like to see in the display is:
Name: Bob Greenham (92% certainty)
Last met: Acme Conference june '06
Current position: Cyan Inc. (99% certainty)
"Bob Greenham" found in one mail thread:
Spokes for Acme Wheels (July '06, 3 mails)
How about:
Name: Britney (97% certainty)
Status: Single (93% certainty)
Turn ons: first person shooters (99% certainty)
Turn offs: Windows (110% certainty)
Alcohol torrerance: 3 beers (84% certainty)
Puts out: 100% certainty
Name: Bob Greenham (92% certainty) Last met: Acme Conference june '06 Current position: Cyan Inc. (99% certainty) "Bob Greenham" found in one mail thread: Spokes for Acme Wheels (July '06, 3 mails)
You forgot some fields:
Additional useful information: Closet homosexual Defrauding supplies ordering system (84% certainty) Tech illiterate - probably still using default password etc...
-- Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
This will eventually be used for web surfing, and after that, it is only a matter of time before web advertisers abuse a feature of "eyeJavaScript" which greatly increases the power of the laser, so you end up looking at that blasted X10 peeping-tom camera advertisement for 18 weeks, every waking hour.
More or less exactly like in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, if memory serves me. Hackers hack into people's "matrices" or whatnot and place popups, on occasion leading to suicide.. Ahh, the joys of technology.
Of course, if we ever get to such a point, count me out. The day someone can directly damage my retina via hacking is the day I become a hermit.
is a fiber obtic network capable of delivering the same bandwidth as a 747 chock full of data DVDs crashing into our homes every few seconds and we can all be Hero.
"Equivalent to 17-inch SVGA display at arm's length Nomad provides the same full-screen resolution as an SVGA desktop monitor. Most handheld devices display only quarterscreen resolution. Scrolling is virtually unnecessary."
So presumably around 1024x768 pixels...
And the colour depth:
"Monochrome red display Nomad's bright-red display provides high contrast
between the display information and virtually any
background view.
32 grey levels Nomad can display text, graphics, halftones or
video in any combination with excellent
readability."
The thing the surprised me was the price, only $3995, which seems pretty cheap, to be turned into a terminator....
I'm reminded of the bit where Arnie scans the dresscode in the bar, and the HUD flashes up 'Inappropriate' at one point...
Re:Display resolution, colour depth
by
squiggleslash
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· Score: 1
So presumably around 1024x768 pixels.
I hope that's what it means and it's just people with no sense of history who've written the blurb, but remember that technically SVGA is 800x600. XGA is 1024x768.
-- You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Display resolution, colour depth
by
psetzer
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· Score: 1
Ooooh. Monochrome red. Now where have I heard of that before? Oh yeah, the Virtual Boy. Does it come with an Ibuprofen feed drip for the constant headaches as well as Mario Tennis?
-- "Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is living in a state of sin." -- John von Neumann
Laser VR Interface in Snow Crash
by
weslocke
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· Score: 1
And in case you're one of the 10 people on this board who hasn't read it, it's a CyberPunk style novel where the interface to a computer/VR is handled by means of goggles that use low intensity lasers played across the retinas to give the ultimate wide-screen experience.
--
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
Re:Laser VR Interface in Snow Crash
by
Glonoinha
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· Score: 1
Close, but no. Actually the goggles were passive, there was a base station that knew where you were and followed you around with lasers aimed at your face drawing the picture on the front of your tinted goggles.
In effect, these are way cooler than Hiro's because nobody can stand between you and the base station. Granted his had much higher resolution and color depth, throughput to the Internet, and were a complete work of fiction.
Ack - just realized that these are more like the Gargoyle setup that he got later on in the book - in fact I think the Gargoyle rig was monochrome also. If this is what you were referring to, I agree with you.
some blind people can benefit
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I was at a talk at the University of Washington (c. 1999) and they said this tech could be used to give sight to blind people who have intact optical nerves (some blind people are blind because of junk in front of the nerve, or have partially non functional nerves). They had tried it on some people w/ good preliminary results.
Oh c'mon fer shit's sake! This was actually a funny post.
The goggles do nothing!
by
Mordaximus
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· Score: 1
From the article : "US firm Microvision..."
Good lord, I misread that Macrovision. The last people on earth I'd want pumping something directly into my eyes, although I'm sure the MPAA would love it!
So you keep your CPU in your top hat and your cane is your mouse.
So in the future the more 1337 you are the more you look like a victorian gentleman.
I recon I can fit 1 Terabyte under a top hat too.
Remember the airport terahertz scanner the tinfoil crowd was in uproar about some time ago (the news item was accompanied by a photo of some fat lady appearing somewhat naked on the monitor when under the eye of the scanner)?
What happens when that scanner gets small enough to be mounted on this lasersight system?
A new Gestapo?
2 things
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
There are only 2 things I can think of immediately when reading this news.
1. Do these glasses go dark when seeing something dangerous? (don't panic!)
2. The message "Already 100 of the see-through laser-based displays have been shipped to Iraq for use by the US Army's Stryker Brigade." leads me to believe the US army are cheaters using wallhacks.
Informative? feh.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Microvision is the company listed in the article, and existing applications were specifically mentioned.
As pointed out above, the real advance in this particular product is the adaptive optics (and as always the ever-shrinking size of the electronics)
feh.
Re:Maverick. I've gotta bail out, everything is BL
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mosschops
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· Score: 1
Wouldn't be lovelly to face a BSOD while driving at 120Km/h, in a rainy night?
Anyone driving at that speed on a dark night may just have time to notice the crash was in DARWIN.SYS.
T800 Model 101
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's the T-800, Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, not the T101. T's come in 100s (T-800 was arnie, T-1000, robert patrick, T-100 those terrible things from the unrelated Terminator 3), model numbers come in arbitrary numbers (like 101). jeepers, get your history right;)
Heads up display
by
wowbagger
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Oh come ON people, this is nothing more than a head mounted Heads up display - you know, like has been around for YEARS!
The only real difference is that this uses a scanning laser, rather than a CRT.
Yes, HMDs are cool. Yes, there are plenty of places HMDs would be nice ot have.
But COME ON - this is a new way of doing something that has been done before! It may lead to better HMDs, it may be a breakthrough.
BUT THE SIMPLE FACT THEY ARE USING LASERS DOES NOT MAKE THIS NEW TERRITORY!
Re:Heads up display
by
David+McBride
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· Score: 3, Informative
This is a significant breakthrough because:
-- Previous HMD's were very heavy (and unbalancing), and not suitable for long-term use; this is not the case with this implementation.
-- The displays used were relatively low quality, requiring small LCD screens with refresh, brightness, colour depth, and resolution issues; with this new design the only limiting factors are how fast you can modulate the laser intensity and how quickly you can scan the retina. (Colour depth is harder as it requires three seperate lasers of the appropriate wavelengths firing at the same mirror, but is within the bounds of possibility.)
-- Previous HMDs were not portable; they required physical lines back to a power supply and main processing units. Power consumption in this design is substantially reduced, meaning batteries and portables/wireless links can be used to make this design untethered.
Although the improvements may seem relatively minor, collectively they allow the use of HMDs in all kinds of applications that were previously completely untenable.
Not to mention the best example of existing HMD (the one in the Apache) meant wearing a helmet the size of a Volkswagen Bug and being tethered to a $20M helicopter. It was cool, but subtle it wasn't.
Re:Maverick. I've gotta bail out, everything is BL
by
mausmalone
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· Score: 1
The better question is how you're gonna get Win 98 to interface with it so you can have a BSOD. Maybe if we get it to work with CyberMaxx drivers...... damn I miss the days of VR. It's funny that everyone lost interest in it once computers actually got powerful enough to draw more than 50 flat-shaded polys in a scene.
When this becomes mainstream...
Television producers would be crushed...
You wouldn't have to buy posters for your wall...
Your little electric heater could look like a roaring fire...
Skin the world!
Retinal angle?
by
mhocker
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Did anyone understand how the system deals with the angle of the retina changing as the user moves their eyes? The retina is (if I understand it correctly) planar, which is how the cornea can focus images on it consistently. Yet the eyes are nearly spherical, meaning that the retina changes its angle as the eyes move.
The reason I ask is that, for this to produce accurate images, it would need to readjust the keystone of the image, much like a LCD projector must do that if it is mounted at an angle to the screen.
If it doesn't correct for this, I can imagine a strange warping effect to images as the eyes are turned.
Re:Retinal angle?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You remember incorrectly. The retinal is not planar.
Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
ValentineMSmith
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· Score: 5, Informative
I'm sorry, but that is incorrect. Unless they've changed the way the targeting devices work for the AH-64D. The AH-64A uses a small HUD that is clipped to the right side of the pilot's helmet. The image is projected on a piece of semi-transparent, angled glass, just like a regular HUD in any other military aircraft.
The innovative thing about the Apache was not the monocle. It was the way the monocle was boresighted and the way the helmet was tracked in 3D space inside the cockpit. The net effect was that, when the copilot/gunner looks at something, the aircraft can tell where he's looking. The TADS (or Target Acquisition and Designation System) follows his head motion. And, if the 30mm chain gun is the active weapon, it follows his head motion as well. All the CPG has to do is either lase to get a range or lase to designate the target and pull the trigger.
For the pilot, the helmet was boresighted so that the PNVS (or Pilot's Night Vision System) would automatically follow his head motions. The PNVS is an infrared system (not light multiplying) based in a small turret at the front of the aircraft. The pilots said that the perspective change took a bit of getting used to, but it worked very effectively.
I was an Apache crewchief for four years.
-- Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
Re:Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
jea6
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· Score: 0
I'm really sorry to have wasted all my mod points on +1 Funny.
--
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Re:Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
merphle
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· Score: 1
And what happens when the pilot's holding the trigger and a Friendly flies by in his peripheral vision? Pilot swings his head around to see what's there, and...
DISCLAIMER: IANAAP (Apache Pilot), but I play one on my computer... and have accidentally destroyed Friendlies with an inadvertant tap of the mouse.
Re:Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
Xaroth
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· Score: 1
I like that 'lase' is now the term to 'use a LASER'. Hooray for the verbing of America (and elsewhere)!
Re:Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
fraudrogic
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, more specifically it's used to describe the action of using a laser to find the range of a target. Almost all personnel involved in using/developing/simulating target aquisition systems in the military that use lasers in this fashion say the word "lase" to aquire and identify (for the tactical software) targets.
-- I only mod up parents of "mod parent up" posts...
Re:Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
This usage of "lase" would be fine except that it already is used to mean that which the gas atoms (or whatever) do in an operating laser. After all, the primary verb in LASER is the "A"mplification, which is done by the atoms.
Re:Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
RichardX
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· Score: 2, Funny
. The TADS (or Target Acquisition and Designation System) follows his head motion
I'm glad you qualified that acronym, because for a moment I wondered what they were doing with the Text Adventure Development System
"Enemy sighted, twelve o'clock" "Quick! Activate the TADS!" "Okay... it says we're in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.. a fierce green snake bars the way"
-- Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Re:Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I believe that in the US army the standard procedure in such an event is promotion...
Re:Slightly OT: Re:Apaches Already Have This
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Nothing, the pilot does not control the weapons, that's the gunner. So while the pilot is looking at the friendly and flying into a clif... the gunner is controlling the weapons.
If it'll work mounted right near your eye I'll bet it'll work some distance away; you wouldn't even need to have the glasses on to get adds, they could just beam them into your eyes as you walk by.
That would be AMAZINGLY annoying.
Too expensive atm...
by
MrBandersnatch
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· Score: 2, Informative
http://www.mvis.com/nomadexpert/info.html
Resolution is a little on the low side at 800x600 for me to get excited about. However it IS exciting that this technology is moving into the workplace - 5-10 years and prices should start dropping to consumer levels and the technology should have improved to a level where some of the..."funner" aspects of this technology become viable. Expect this technology to become pervasive within the next 20 years.
I really hadnt expected to see something like this at the sort of prices they are talking about for another 10 years or so - nice when the future comes early:)
Not that pricey
by
Steelwings
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· Score: 2, Insightful
At $4k it cost less than a plasma display.
Transmetropolitan, here I come!
by
BobGregg
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· Score: 1
>>Offshoots of the technology could be put into digital cameras, >>offering the same viewfinder capabilities of a high quality single lens reflex camera. >>Photographers would be able to preview a full-colour image >>and make focus-control and depth-of-field adjustments much more easily.
Woohoo - now I get to be Spider Robinson! So, where's my bowel disruptor...
...was my first thought. gimme my metaverse, but spare me the horror of that wonder virus they had...
--
--AP
Eye and head tracking?
by
SilentTristero
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Seems like the really hard part of any augmented-reality HMD is to keep the displayed image in place over the real image. Are they doing eye tracking or just head tracking? Need to do both to get the displayed image really stable and avoid swimming and the resulting motion sickness. (As the eye swivels in the socket, the displayed image needs to change slightly to overlap the same real object.) The article doesn't say anything about their tracking, but IMHO it should.
Re:I MUST HAVE ONE! NOW!
by
nacturation
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Your eye is approximately equal to a 100 megapixel camera, only instead of an evenly distributed rectangular grid, it's more of a bullseye with the greatest density of rods/cones near the center. So that's the theoretical limit of resolution possible, but of course the electronics governing the laser movement will be the limiting factor here.
-- Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Evolution from Driving w/ Cellphones
by
Lokatana
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· Score: 2, Funny
For the last couple of years, there's been lots in the press about the dangers of driving while talking on a cellphone, and how that distraction is a major cause of car accidents.
I can see the headlines now:
Car accident fatality found with a smile on his face and his *censored* in his hand.
All I could think while reading this was that advertising is going to be going to a whole new level with this!
You happen to look at a computer and a ad for micro$oft appears in your eye... ACK!
Then the spammers attack,...
What are the long-term effects of passing coherent light through the aq. and virt. humors of the eye? Our eyes were evolved for the spread spectrum of sunlight.
-- [You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Re:Important Question
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Probably the same effect as any other frequency of light hitting the eye. As long as it's not the only color you're seeing for a long period of time, it's hard to imagine how it could be a problem. Reflect sunlight off any colored surface and it's not spread-spectrum sunlight anymore.
Heck, right now, looking at your computer monitor, you've got exactly three monocolors mixing in various proportions. Think that's injuring your eye?
Re:Important Question
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Phosphor emissions are hardly as monochomatic as a laser
That's what somebody probably said about asbestos. Which is why it's sensible to ask about the long term effects of laser light upon the eye humors, "rod" cells and "cone" cells.
We cannot replace an eye's vision. Sustained exposure to even low-power laser light may prove damaging to the components of the eye as I outlined above. And the long term may mean that millions of people could become blinded or visually degraded in the coming decades.
It's a question worth asking. Heck, it's a question that MUST be answered before we create legions of blind men.
-- [You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Although your response was amusing, I hold the opinion that the one-eyed man in a land of the blind will not be king. He will be a pariah instead. A land of the blind will necessarily be organized around blindness, and his critical difference will lead people to shun him.
Then again, perhaps I've too much time on my hands.
-- [You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
But if they're blind, how will they know that the One-Eyed man is not also blind?
Re:Important Question
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yeah but...that's a physical substance you're breathing in. This is a color. It's not especially bright, it's not ultraviolet, it's just light of a very particular color. You didn't "outline" anything, you just said "what if it's bad for you"...give me some kind of hypothesis how this could possibly cause any problem. Other than "ooh, it's a laser, sounds scary."
Yeah, the light's coherent. All that means is the waves aren't interfering with each other, so you get more effective brightness for given power. That's why a 5-watt laser burns holes in things, and a 5-watt lightbulb doesn't, even with a lens. But this laser is so low-powered, it's still just normal-intensity light.
And it's monochromatic, but they're talking about laying this over your normal vision, so you've still got a full range of colors coming in. Put someone in a dark room and show them only monochromatic light for a long period of time, maybe they'll lose sensitivity somewhere, I dunno. But adding one particular color in a field of a million other colors...how can that possibly hurt?
I can't wait until photon based displays are more common. The idea is simple: rather than blasting electrons onto a florescent surface to produce different colored light, you blast photons directly onto the retina to layer over what you normally see.
I would love to have a heads-up-display in almost everything I do. There are a few obvious benefits: o A traditional florescent surface blocks your view of the world behind it, while only the "photon projector" would be in the way in this case. The point is that is needn't be directly in front of your eye, so it doesn't block what you foveate upon.
o It is embedded the 3D real world, so 3D modes of interaction would boost productivity and functionality of software.
o It would involve detecting information from your environment, which will either be done by ubiquitous computing or passive computer vision, both of which I would love to see come to fruition.
o The ability to drown-out "ugly" artifacts in an environment, or enhance them, would lead to new levels of personal aesthetics. Unanimity of aesthetics without conformity to standard definitions.
BUT, this is way in the future, unfortunately. sigh...
note this post in my blog: http://while-true.blogspot.com/
The two most powerful applications are...
by
SuperGus
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· Score: 2, Insightful
(1) Closed-captioning for hearing-impaired users, when coupled with voice reconition.
(2) Real-time foreign languge subtitles, when coupled with voice recognition (speaker talks in French, user sees English subtitles in field of view - "Your mother was a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries.")
(3) Real-time foreign language text translation, when coupled with OCR (read a menu in a French restaurant, see English meaning in field of view)
OK, three. The three most powerful applications are these, plus fanatical dedication to the Pope. Four. Amongst the four most powerful...
Surprisingly, I haven't seen a single post mentioning:
"pr0n on the go"
If your girlfriend/wife makes you go see something like "Uptown Girls" or "13 going on 20" (or whatever it's called)... Hey! Hey! I see potential in this.
-- I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
link to the company
by
srblackbird
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· Score: 2, Informative
-- "The test of the morality of a society is what it does for it's children." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Poster didn't read the article?
by
AnswerIs42
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· Score: 1
hmm..
This is already being used in the car manufacturing industry. Hmm, nothing in there about that.. some DEALERSHIPS for HONDA are using it. "Manufacturing industry" that does not even come close too.
Infact, these would be perfect distractors and would cause many safety issues in assembly plants.
You have Robots, HiLos, Flat Trucks, parts on conveyors, parts on overheads, welding, alarms, flashing warning lights, managers, teamleaders, and co-workers all around you.
In automotive plants you job is specific, you are not like a mechanic where you have the whole to look at.
Automotive plants already have much better systems in place for this kind of data display and is a lot easier to look at and understand.
I dont know if this was touched on in previous posts, but interactivity would be neat. So you could press virtual buttons.
also, that heliodisplay from IO2 technologies might be able to rid us of the dorky lense that would have to be in front of our face. But the laser technology pretty much requires a mirror to get it to your eye, so maybe if the helio were tweaked it could work. I dont know, i'm not a lawyer
-- Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
just wait ..
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
until the computer crashes and all you can see is the blue screen of death
Funny how the world seems to be catching up with Neal
Stephenson.
Great. Soon we'll all be living in the seventeenth century...
-- One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
I have used this before...
by
BroFrog
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· Score: 2, Interesting
A few years ago I was able to use one of these systems (prototype). Truly a very awesome setup. At the time the unit was composed of a very light headset, which was capable of projecting a single color, red. The most interesting future feature presented was the ability for this laser to be shot across a room into your eye, eliminating the need for the headset. Since I saw the headset demo a few years back I am curious if they have perfected a means to do this yet.
This is great. Now the blond bimbo driving 80 mph next to on the instertate will not only be trying to sip her diet coke and apply makeup, but will be watching the Bon-Marche's sale scroller instead of the road. I can't wait!
Actually, it is my understanding that the controller software in the eye takes several micro offset images and then produces an interpolated image of much higher resolution, which is then compressed into a datastream and sent to the driver (optic nerve). So the theoretical resolution is actually a function of the resolution of the eye * (speed of the eye in actual frames per second/the number of frames transmitted per second) with allowance made for the compression stage.
The actual resolution transmitted to the brain may be much much higher than the mere 100 megapixel single image resolution.
Disclaimer: IANAOBYRMV (I Am Not An Optical Biologist, Your Resolution May Vary)
--
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Them: This revolutionary new display will open new fields of immersive computing! Us: It shoots a LASER into your RETINA!
My co-workers always complain when I try to do that (shoot a laser into their retinas) in the boring board meetings (Disclaimer: No I really don't do that. Do not try this at home.)
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Would be great when combined with subvocal adapter
by
pegasustonans
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· Score: 1
Subvocal-to-text interpretation programs combined with instant messaging would provide for amusing secret exchanges during meetings.
-- And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Old news! Already got one!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I've got some pretty annoying floaters in my vision now, I'm not sure if I would like walking around seeing the equivilent of pac-man screen burn-in in my field of view.
Augmented reality pop-up ad blockers
by
ruzel
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· Score: 1
On the other hand, once digital paper comes into being and advertising on the wall of the subway starts moving around in the same annoying fashion as most banner ads, then this device could be used to detect a certain frequency of movement or brightness of color and block or blur it! Voila! Pop-up ad blockers for reality! ______________________________________
Borg
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Someone has to say it: "We are the Borg".
There, I said it.
Vernor Vinge ... Deepness in the Sky
by
yohohogreengiant
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· Score: 2, Informative
Great sci-fi where one of the main technologies "Conceptual Space" or communal wallpaper where large parties of people (like the bridge crew of their ship) equipped with these eye scanners create a seamless simulation. Nice to see Tech following in the track laid down by Fiction.
I'll wait for the clinical trials on the effects of using these long-term.
-- For great justice.
Re:I MUST HAVE ONE! NOW!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's driven by VGA signals and does not accept any sort of control to drive it as a vector display (which it isn't, anyway).
Been waiting Seven Years
by
Steve500
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I first saw Microvisions VRD (Virtual Retinal Display) back in 1997 on Tomorrows World. Back then they were confident that we would all be able to buy home VR console systems etc etc within a couple of years. I waited....and waited..and waited...
Seven years later we have a red monochrome strap-on monstrosity that makes you look like the geeky Borg that the other Borgs tease.
Hurry up with something decent! I want my Sony VR games console, with dataglove now!!
I might be wrong (or just read too much William Gibson) , but i really thought that this technology existed already, and has been used for years in special helicopter helmets, with "targeting by the look - or-whtever-it-is-called-exaclty" replacing traditional HUDs... I might have been wrong though...
Would be cool to have a projected layer of extra information even when looking at my monitor:) or maybe I just need a bigger monitor and more of them ?:)
When i first read that i read "lasers burning the images directly onto the retina" now im just really put-off the idea, marketing tip: don't use words that sound like bad words.
-- This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Ok, so how many people are writing e-mails now to the company trying to find out how to get into the purchasing chain?
-- Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
Cheap 3rd world labour
by
t_allardyce
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· Score: 1
Honda has found that technicians are saving about 40% in terms of the time spent working on engines, saving the company an estimated $2,000 per month per technician.
2000 = 40% of 5000, so techicians are worth only $5000 a month?!?!
-- This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It's been well-described in Vinge
by
devphil
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· Score: 1
Specifically, his kick-ass novel, A Deepness In the Sky. Gazillions of floating self-propelled nanotech devices, working off of broadcast power, taking your picture, reading your biometric data, etc.
The data are then analyzed by... um, spoiler territory.
The data are then analyzed to predict what you're feeling, thinking, expecting, paying attention to, etc. Very very brilliantly written.
-- You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
DOES IT COME WITH A POP UP BLOCKER?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Because it would suck to get online casino and free viagra adds flashing across my field of vision every five minutes. I could deal with the porn popups though
Yes, but now they have a WEARABLE version
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Anonymous Coward
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Sort of.
"Within the decade, the team hopes to produce an eyeglass-sized device that displays images at resolutions approaching human vision."
Listen gnumbnuts, it's a frickin' lazer! At some goddamned level it has to work as a vector display!
Now, granted shortsighted engineers buffaloed by the marketing dept may not think to expose that interface. Just look at Transmeta. (Actually, unless they provide proper hardware safety interlocks, you'd have a greater chance of a programming bug burning your eye out using it as a vector display...)
--
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Re:Maverick. I've gotta bail out, everything is BL
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RichardX
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.
We now have the tech to shift some really seriously impressive stuff about - even taking into account the fact you're rendering two displays for VR.
I think the limiting factor now is the displays. It's simply not currently feasible to get affordable high res displays small enough to use as VR. Hopefully this technology will provide a solution to that problem.
Having said all that, I seem to be in a tiny minority who think that depth is a killer feature in graphics - I still think shutter glasses, and even anaglyphs are cool. IMO it just makes *SUCH* a huge difference to look down over the edge of a cliff in, say, UT2004 and get that "Woaah! That's a LONG way down" effect
-- Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Novels in the Dungeons & Dragons, Warcraft and of course Star Wars franchises continue to sell and sell enough to keep churning them out. Oh, you meant people of a younger age don't read good SF.
Subject-Verb Agreement
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The BBC are reporting...
Damn you Brits with your faulty subject-verb agreement! The BBC is a group--a single item. Just because it is composed of many individuals does not mean it should take the plural verb inflection!
Surely you would agree that crumpet is singular, yes? Yet it, too, is made up of multiple entities (ingredients, molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, barristers, lorries, etc.). So where do you draw the line? I see no consistency. None! You'd think you invented the language the way you swagger about, making arbitrary and indefensible syntactic proclamations!
Not just a cool toy or expensive tool but...
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Wizzy+Wig
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· Score: 1
this technology might eventually be used for vision correction heretofore untouchable by traditional lenses, getting around things like retinal and corneal damage.
I've been following this company for years. I hate to bitch about slow development (cause I'm the pot calling the kettle black), but they've been developing this thing for YEARS AND YEARS. After their IPO in 1996 I was really excited about it. Since then they've only managed the first initial nomad (really big and bulky) to this new model. 8 years and no color, no higher resolution.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the use of adaptive optics for imaging the retina. This involves using deformable mirrors or micromirror arrays to sense how the retina deforms a wavefront.
Anyone else immediately think of the old "set refresh rate to zero" hack that used to be able to burn out monitors?
One will I get X-ray vision?
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
I'd hate to be the guy who's plugged in when there's a power surge...
But, more prosaically, I wonder what the effective pixel resolution of the display is? colour depth, too.
--
Callas
Don't reprogram one of these things. Or else...you might get a type of LASIK treatment you didn't ask for.
"AHhhhhh...my eyes!!!!"
Life is not for the lazy.
Sounds kinda like beer googles, only pricier.
Can I bum a sig?
Holodecks are a reality at last !!
Now all i need is a few holograms like Seven of Nine..., Marilyn Monroe...
Now all we need are friggin HUMANS with friggin lasers attached fo their foreheads
Cool - now I can have a "You've got mail" banner scroll across my field of view and cool rotatey vector envelope icon will appear at bottom right of everything I look at...
The article mentions the military operations in Iraq. I think that a neat military use would be to couple this with a heat sensing utility so that while on the field they could see their opponents better.
It'd be like playing COD or 1942. w00t!
- AC Since this is frontpage I'm not going to roll the Karma dice... Sorry Mods!
I have a hard enough time descerning reality as it is.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Does this work for everyone who has vision? Or will it only work for some, like traditional 3D, or those few who could actually play the Nintendo Virtual Boy without getting a headache?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Or perhaps special glasses that make your girlfriend/wife look like you really wish she did!
Wait honey don't come out yet I can't find my laser glasses!!!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye!
Design for Use, not Construction!
You too could soon have T101 vision."
Not like I spend enough time staring at code, just what I need is to have a constant stream of 6502 assembler every waking moment.
May include image burn in, burning retinas, melted lenses, and bloody eye sockets.
I think this system, or one just like it, was on /. a year or two ago. I remember the obligatory messages from people who thought that laser light in the eye automatically meant you'd go blind.
Ok, so I live in a TMAWS, our country is dominated by FOQNE's, I already have an avatar in the Metaverse, this is just one more step closer to Neal's vision. Now where's my Pizza? It's been 29.43124 minutes!
There was a company from Seattle IIRC that was working with this around 5 to 7 years ago. It's an extremely cool technology though and I was bummed that I never heard anything else beyond that. Glad to hear it's still around.
Carpe Canem - Seize the Dog
Would be cool for notebooks.... have no need for a screen. Would make them even smaller and probaly consume less power too.
Too late. You posted your message after several blindless-related postings had been made.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
When I was in the Marines way back in 1989, I read about tests with little retina-mapped lasers for grunts. It never caught on, but the technology was there and it was being tested. What is new here? Are they casing the old technology in cool pastel colors now?
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Assimilation Complete.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Sounds like an excellent advertising opportunity.
Have Pamela Anderson sculpted onto your retina. The ultimate bio-wallpaper.
My eyes, the goggles, they do nothing! Nothing!!!
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
...but it'll be way better when I can get laser beams to come out of my eyes.
Hey, this has already been doing this for years.
Pretty cool, but I wish they would do tricolor lasers and then blast full color into they eye. Power might be an issue... ah, retina over easy?
Am I the only one who thinks the image of the device looks suspiciously like the Dragon Ball Z scouter device used by the Saiyans?
"The BBC are reporting on a system that can superimpose images over your vision using small lasers beaming the images directly onto the retina. This is already being used in the car manufacturing industry."
Eeeewww! Does anyone else squirm at the thought of lasers beaming directly into the retina?
#define struct union
This looks exactly like Steve Mann's EyeTap device. Which, incidentally, runs Linux.
Well, if you buy the software upgrade, you can get vector graphics instead of raster. And support for three colors!
... I don't really know.)
(j/k
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Finally the whole world can be a hypertext document.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Didn't he have a game with something like this on ST:TNG. IIRC the whole crew got addicted to some game played like this and Data had to save the ship. That silly Wesley, almost killed everyone again... or was that episode the first time.
(Sorry Wil, had to use the reference, was just too apropos.(Man, I'm a nerd!))
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Harken back to the GPS-sensitive gaming, and you might even be able to do overlays... so that someones character in the game world is overlayed (roughly) on top of them ... and you can "battle" in the 3d world.
Would be cool for virtual offices as well.. teleworker shows at the meeting if you have the sunglasses.
meh
Honest, officer. I was driving along and something got in my eye and that's all I remember.
Wait until you get spammed (directly in your eyes) when you're trying to enjoy a ball game (in person).
Support the First Amendment: Read at -1.Support the First Amendment: Read at -1.
Eh, no. RTFA (Amendment).
If an image is only being displayed on one eye would there not be some distortion whenever the other eye is open? I put my finger in front of my right eye. Close my right eye and my left eye cannot see it. Close my left eye and my right eye sees it fine. Open both eyes and it's a distorted "see-through" image of my finger. Would a similar effect not happen here or is there some compensation built into the device? I saw no mention of it in the article but perhaps someone has more information.
Mirrored contacts?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
If there was some way to hijack the optical nerve, grab images from it, process it and get various information, and then overlay it onto our eyes, that'll be awesome!
Combined with the 'take a picture and find where you are' thingy on slashdot (which I can't seem to find), we can immediately find out where we are, and with all the landmarks overlayed over!
Which is undoubtedly cool. And undoubtedly we'll have to wait a couple of years for that to happen.
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
earlier it used to be - U C what U want 2 C now it will be - U C what U R shown ;)
This technology is pretty well-established in the military. Information is painted directly onto the retina for pilots of the Apache helicopter. This data doesn't get faded out and you don't have to look down. Pilots can keep focused on their targets, etc. It's perfectly safe.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Wouldn't be lovelly to face a BSOD while driving at 120Km/h, in a rainy night?
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Google's IPO will be a winner.
Blockwars: free, multiplayer, head to head game
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I think it is hard to overestimate the long term impact of this technology, if it lives up to its promises. This could be the final piece in the puzzle needed to make wearable computing a mainstream reality (rather than a thing for visionary geeks). My guess is that within 10 years of the first real massmarket product, we will all be wearing those when working, driving, shopping, etc.
Soon they will have games out for you eye to play. Like in the Next Generation star trek. We will all be part of it.
Mark
for FPS games.... If this thing could be tweaked to provide an image for your entire field of vision it would be far superior than those nasty goggles that were used in 'Virtual Reality' systems a few years back. They were simply screens right infront of your eyes. Desert combat and the like would rock if you could use your peripheral vision.
It wouldn't be much harder to sense if the eyes have moved and could allow the user to see larger images if they could look to the left and right and have the image scroll along...
Would be interesting to find if it gives headaches to the users like CRT monitors do these days..
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
We can help you choose your perfect holiday, John Anderton.
Admittedly, it'd be really awesome to have a heads-up display, if this ever becomes available to the public...
But how long before there would be banners and pop-ups? Of course, there'd be restrictions to keep people from getting hit with porn ads whilst driving or anything like that, but imagine if it became used for things like VR Gaming or websurfing.
Think of how much companies would be willing to pay to have their products beamed directly onto your retina... I might be overly pessimistic, but that'd be a pretty uncool situation.
Putting all the "cook your eyes with high-powered laser" jokes aside, this has several useful applications.
I'd like a subtitle application. A smart application analyses voices and sends subtitles only I can see.
"He's lying".
"She's eager but expecting disappointment"
"They want to buy, at any price".
"He's still lying".
Subtitling conversations is a great thing. But we can go further. GPS is an obvious plug-in. "Go left, now!" "Almost there" "Cops ahead, slow down and hide the bottles".
Next, how about linking this to streaming news sources. I'd never miss another Fark story. Granted, ticker-tape messages scrolling under your line of sight might get boring. But that's what bash.org is for.
I also want the reality-skinning software. This has been briefly touched on in a previous comment. We can go further. Everyone we meet can get their own photoshopped skin. The boss? He gets a moustache and bright red hair. That girl in finance who refuses all your expenses? A sign on her back saying 'Kick Me'.
Finally, I'd like a system of virtual real-world messaging. This works as follows: comments are linked to real spatial cordinates. As you look at the appropriate building or space, you get to read the comments. To keep comments semi-private, you'd have join a server and channel, like irc.
So I think laser-augmented vision has the potential to radically change society.
Of course we have to get around the fried-eye issues first.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
This will eventually be used for web surfing, and after that, it is only a matter of time before web advertisers abuse a feature of "eyeJavaScript" which greatly increases the power of the laser, so you end up looking at that blasted X10 peeping-tom camera advertisement for 18 weeks, every waking hour.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
is a fiber obtic network capable of delivering the same bandwidth as a 747 chock full of data DVDs crashing into our homes every few seconds and we can all be Hero.
I bet the advertisement industry would spring for free glasses as long as you don't mind recieving there ads.
I can see it now, I am in an important meeting and BAM viagra spam pops up over Bob the Boss's face.
And the colour depth:
The thing the surprised me was the price, only $3995, which seems pretty cheap, to be turned into a terminator....
I'm reminded of the bit where Arnie scans the dresscode in the bar, and the HUD flashes up 'Inappropriate' at one point...
That was always one of the things I thought was the coolest about Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash.
And in case you're one of the 10 people on this board who hasn't read it, it's a CyberPunk style novel where the interface to a computer/VR is handled by means of goggles that use low intensity lasers played across the retinas to give the ultimate wide-screen experience.
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
I was at a talk at the University of Washington (c. 1999) and they said this tech could be used to give sight to blind people who have intact optical nerves (some blind people are blind because of junk in front of the nerve, or have partially non functional nerves). They had tried it on some people w/ good preliminary results.
Thinking of piping the video from that Sony Handicam from a few years back to this?
Remember? The one that if you switched on the 'Night Vision' feature you could see through clothing?
Erm...Maybe not such a good thought so soon after the 'Tron Costume' story here......
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
Hey buddy.. got a dead cat in there or what?
The Slashdot poster considers possible responses:
>YES/NO
>FP!
>IN SOVIET RUSSIA...
>IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THOSE!
>FSCK YOU
>FSCK YOU, WINDOZE LUSER
SP:
Fsck you, Windoze luser.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Good lord, I misread that Macrovision. The last people on earth I'd want pumping something directly into my eyes, although I'm sure the MPAA would love it!
So you keep your CPU in your top hat and your cane is your mouse. So in the future the more 1337 you are the more you look like a victorian gentleman. I recon I can fit 1 Terabyte under a top hat too.
Remember the airport terahertz scanner the tinfoil crowd was in uproar about some time ago (the news item was accompanied by a photo of some fat lady appearing somewhat naked on the monitor when under the eye of the scanner)?
What happens when that scanner gets small enough to be mounted on this lasersight system?
A new Gestapo?
There are only 2 things I can think of immediately when reading this news.
1. Do these glasses go dark when seeing something dangerous? (don't panic!)
2. The message "Already 100 of the see-through laser-based displays have been shipped to Iraq for use by the US Army's Stryker Brigade." leads me to believe the US army are cheaters using wallhacks.
Microvision is the company listed in the article, and existing applications were specifically mentioned.
As pointed out above, the real advance in this particular product is the adaptive optics (and as always the ever-shrinking size of the electronics)
feh.
Wouldn't be lovelly to face a BSOD while driving at 120Km/h, in a rainy night?
Anyone driving at that speed on a dark night may just have time to notice the crash was in DARWIN.SYS.
It's the T-800, Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, not the T101. T's come in 100s (T-800 was arnie, T-1000, robert patrick, T-100 those terrible things from the unrelated Terminator 3), model numbers come in arbitrary numbers (like 101). jeepers, get your history right ;)
Oh come ON people, this is nothing more than a head mounted Heads up display - you know, like has been around for YEARS!
The only real difference is that this uses a scanning laser, rather than a CRT.
Yes, HMDs are cool. Yes, there are plenty of places HMDs would be nice ot have.
But COME ON - this is a new way of doing something that has been done before! It may lead to better HMDs, it may be a breakthrough.
BUT THE SIMPLE FACT THEY ARE USING LASERS DOES NOT MAKE THIS NEW TERRITORY!
www.eFax.com are spammers
The better question is how you're gonna get Win 98 to interface with it so you can have a BSOD. Maybe if we get it to work with CyberMaxx drivers ...... damn I miss the days of VR. It's funny that everyone lost interest in it once computers actually got powerful enough to draw more than 50 flat-shaded polys in a scene.
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
That'll never work and for one very good reason.
The sharks under the lasers will never fit in the googles.
psshht... amateurs!
I would imagine that pixels are irrelevant - it's a vector display. With that in mind, I wonder if it would have Vectrex-like 'dots' at corners?
When this becomes mainstream... Television producers would be crushed... You wouldn't have to buy posters for your wall... Your little electric heater could look like a roaring fire... Skin the world!
Did anyone understand how the system deals with the angle of the retina changing as the user moves their eyes? The retina is (if I understand it correctly) planar, which is how the cornea can focus images on it consistently. Yet the eyes are nearly spherical, meaning that the retina changes its angle as the eyes move.
The reason I ask is that, for this to produce accurate images, it would need to readjust the keystone of the image, much like a LCD projector must do that if it is mounted at an angle to the screen.
If it doesn't correct for this, I can imagine a strange warping effect to images as the eyes are turned.
The innovative thing about the Apache was not the monocle. It was the way the monocle was boresighted and the way the helmet was tracked in 3D space inside the cockpit. The net effect was that, when the copilot/gunner looks at something, the aircraft can tell where he's looking. The TADS (or Target Acquisition and Designation System) follows his head motion. And, if the 30mm chain gun is the active weapon, it follows his head motion as well. All the CPG has to do is either lase to get a range or lase to designate the target and pull the trigger.
For the pilot, the helmet was boresighted so that the PNVS (or Pilot's Night Vision System) would automatically follow his head motions. The PNVS is an infrared system (not light multiplying) based in a small turret at the front of the aircraft. The pilots said that the perspective change took a bit of getting used to, but it worked very effectively.
I was an Apache crewchief for four years.
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
If it'll work mounted right near your eye I'll bet it'll work some distance away; you wouldn't even need to have the glasses on to get adds, they could just beam them into your eyes as you walk by. That would be AMAZINGLY annoying.
http://www.mvis.com/nomadexpert/info.html
:)
Resolution is a little on the low side at 800x600 for me to get excited about. However it IS exciting that this technology is moving into the workplace - 5-10 years and prices should start dropping to consumer levels and the technology should have improved to a level where some of the..."funner" aspects of this technology become viable. Expect this technology to become pervasive within the next 20 years.
I really hadnt expected to see something like this at the sort of prices they are talking about for another 10 years or so - nice when the future comes early
At $4k it cost less than a plasma display.
>>Offshoots of the technology could be put into digital cameras,
>>offering the same viewfinder capabilities of a high quality single lens reflex camera.
>>Photographers would be able to preview a full-colour image
>>and make focus-control and depth-of-field adjustments much more easily.
Woohoo - now I get to be Spider Robinson! So, where's my bowel disruptor...
Women could wear male-enhancing vision overlays so that we appear 30 pounds lighter and fully muscled.
I can see stuff like that on acid.
Anyone else immediately think of the imaging of the computers in Snow Crash? Funny how the world seems to be catching up with Neal Stephenson.
Seems like the really hard part of any augmented-reality HMD is to keep the displayed image in place over the real image. Are they doing eye tracking or just head tracking? Need to do both to get the displayed image really stable and avoid swimming and the resulting motion sickness. (As the eye swivels in the socket, the displayed image needs to change slightly to overlap the same real object.) The article doesn't say anything about their tracking, but IMHO it should.
Your eye is approximately equal to a 100 megapixel camera, only instead of an evenly distributed rectangular grid, it's more of a bullseye with the greatest density of rods/cones near the center. So that's the theoretical limit of resolution possible, but of course the electronics governing the laser movement will be the limiting factor here.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
For the last couple of years, there's been lots in the press about the dangers of driving while talking on a cellphone, and how that distraction is a major cause of car accidents.
I can see the headlines now:
Car accident fatality found with a smile on his face and his *censored* in his hand.
All I could think while reading this was that advertising is going to be going to a whole new level with this! You happen to look at a computer and a ad for micro$oft appears in your eye... ACK! Then the spammers attack,...
What are the long-term effects of passing coherent light through the aq. and virt. humors of the eye? Our eyes were evolved for the spread spectrum of sunlight.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
This is really really really old news... The University of Washington group that developed this was written up in wired in 1995.
Amazing... don't suppose there's a company out there called Ono-Sendai that's funding these guys...
I can't wait until photon based displays are more common. The idea is simple: rather than blasting electrons onto a florescent surface to produce different colored light, you blast photons directly onto the retina to layer over what you normally see.
I would love to have a heads-up-display in almost everything I do. There are a few obvious benefits:
o A traditional florescent surface blocks your view of the world behind it, while only the "photon projector" would be in the way in this case. The point is that is needn't be directly in front of your eye, so it doesn't block what you foveate upon.
o It is embedded the 3D real world, so 3D modes of interaction would boost productivity and functionality of software.
o It would involve detecting information from your environment, which will either be done by ubiquitous computing or passive computer vision, both of which I would love to see come to fruition.
o The ability to drown-out "ugly" artifacts in an environment, or enhance them, would lead to new levels of personal aesthetics. Unanimity of aesthetics without conformity to standard definitions.
BUT, this is way in the future, unfortunately. sigh...
note this post in my blog:
http://while-true.blogspot.com/
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
(1) Closed-captioning for hearing-impaired users, when coupled with voice reconition.
(2) Real-time foreign languge subtitles, when coupled with voice recognition (speaker talks in French, user sees English subtitles in field of view - "Your mother was a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries.")
(3) Real-time foreign language text translation, when coupled with OCR (read a menu in a French restaurant, see English meaning in field of view)
OK, three. The three most powerful applications are these, plus fanatical dedication to the Pope. Four. Amongst the four most powerful...
Surprisingly, I haven't seen a single post mentioning: "pr0n on the go" If your girlfriend/wife makes you go see something like "Uptown Girls" or "13 going on 20" (or whatever it's called)... Hey! Hey! I see potential in this.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
http://www.microvision.com/nomadexpert/index.html Nice movie :)
"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for it's children." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
This is already being used in the car manufacturing industry. Hmm, nothing in there about that.. some DEALERSHIPS for HONDA are using it. "Manufacturing industry" that does not even come close too.
Infact, these would be perfect distractors and would cause many safety issues in assembly plants.
You have Robots, HiLos, Flat Trucks, parts on conveyors, parts on overheads, welding, alarms, flashing warning lights, managers, teamleaders, and co-workers all around you.
In automotive plants you job is specific, you are not like a mechanic where you have the whole to look at.
Automotive plants already have much better systems in place for this kind of data display and is a lot easier to look at and understand.
also, that heliodisplay from IO2 technologies might be able to rid us of the dorky lense that would have to be in front of our face. But the laser technology pretty much requires a mirror to get it to your eye, so maybe if the helio were tweaked it could work. I dont know, i'm not a lawyer
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
until the computer crashes and all you can see is the blue screen of death
Funny how the world seems to be catching up with Neal Stephenson.
Great. Soon we'll all be living in the seventeenth century...
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
A few years ago I was able to use one of these systems (prototype). Truly a very awesome setup. At the time the unit was composed of a very light headset, which was capable of projecting a single color, red. The most interesting future feature presented was the ability for this laser to be shot across a room into your eye, eliminating the need for the headset. Since I saw the headset demo a few years back I am curious if they have perfected a means to do this yet.
This is great. Now the blond bimbo driving 80 mph next to on the instertate will not only be trying to sip her diet coke and apply makeup, but will be watching the Bon-Marche's sale scroller instead of the road. I can't wait!
Actually, it is my understanding that the controller software in the eye takes several micro offset images and then produces an interpolated image of much higher resolution, which is then compressed into a datastream and sent to the driver (optic nerve). So the theoretical resolution is actually a function of the resolution of the eye * (speed of the eye in actual frames per second/the number of frames transmitted per second) with allowance made for the compression stage.
The actual resolution transmitted to the brain may be much much higher than the mere 100 megapixel single image resolution.
Disclaimer: IANAOBYRMV (I Am Not An Optical Biologist, Your Resolution May Vary)
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Us: It shoots a LASER into your RETINA!
My co-workers always complain when I try to do that (shoot a laser into their retinas) in the boring board meetings (Disclaimer: No I really don't do that. Do not try this at home.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Subvocal-to-text interpretation programs combined with instant messaging would provide for amusing secret exchanges during meetings.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
http://www.vidgame.net/NINTENDO/VIRTBOY.html
I've got some pretty annoying floaters in my vision now, I'm not sure if I would like walking around seeing the equivilent of pac-man screen burn-in in my field of view.
On the other hand, once digital paper comes into being and advertising on the wall of the subway starts moving around in the same annoying fashion as most banner ads, then this device could be used to detect a certain frequency of movement or brightness of color and block or blur it! Voila! Pop-up ad blockers for reality!
______________________________________
There, I said it.
Great sci-fi where one of the main technologies "Conceptual Space" or communal wallpaper where large parties of people (like the bridge crew of their ship) equipped with these eye scanners create a seamless simulation. Nice to see Tech following in the track laid down by Fiction.
I'll wait for the clinical trials on the effects of using these long-term.
For great justice.
It's driven by VGA signals and does not accept any sort of control to drive it as a vector display (which it isn't, anyway).
I first saw Microvisions VRD (Virtual Retinal Display) back in 1997 on Tomorrows World. Back then they were confident that we would all be able to buy home VR console systems etc etc within a couple of years. I waited....and waited..and waited... Seven years later we have a red monochrome strap-on monstrosity that makes you look like the geeky Borg that the other Borgs tease. Hurry up with something decent! I want my Sony VR games console, with dataglove now!!
I might be wrong (or just read too much William Gibson) , but i really thought that this technology existed already, and has been used for years in special helicopter helmets, with "targeting by the look - or-whtever-it-is-called-exaclty" replacing traditional HUDs... ...
:) or maybe I just need a bigger monitor and more of them ? :)
I might have been wrong though
Would be cool to have a projected layer of extra information even when looking at my monitor
When i first read that i read "lasers burning the images directly onto the retina" now im just really put-off the idea, marketing tip: don't use words that sound like bad words.
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Ok, so how many people are writing e-mails now to the company trying to find out how to get into the purchasing chain?
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
Honda has found that technicians are saving about 40% in terms of the time spent working on engines, saving the company an estimated $2,000 per month per technician.
2000 = 40% of 5000, so techicians are worth only $5000 a month?!?!
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Specifically, his kick-ass novel, A Deepness In the Sky. Gazillions of floating self-propelled nanotech devices, working off of broadcast power, taking your picture, reading your biometric data, etc.
The data are then analyzed by... um, spoiler territory.
The data are then analyzed to predict what you're feeling, thinking, expecting, paying attention to, etc. Very very brilliantly written.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Because it would suck to get online casino and free viagra adds flashing across my field of vision every five minutes. I could deal with the porn popups though
Sort of.
"Within the decade, the team hopes to produce an eyeglass-sized device that displays images at resolutions approaching human vision."
I'd say they've made marked improvement
Now, granted shortsighted engineers buffaloed by the marketing dept may not think to expose that interface. Just look at Transmeta. (Actually, unless they provide proper hardware safety interlocks, you'd have a greater chance of a programming bug burning your eye out using it as a vector display...)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.
We now have the tech to shift some really seriously impressive stuff about - even taking into account the fact you're rendering two displays for VR.
I think the limiting factor now is the displays. It's simply not currently feasible to get affordable high res displays small enough to use as VR. Hopefully this technology will provide a solution to that problem.
Having said all that, I seem to be in a tiny minority who think that depth is a killer feature in graphics - I still think shutter glasses, and even anaglyphs are cool. IMO it just makes *SUCH* a huge difference to look down over the edge of a cliff in, say, UT2004 and get that "Woaah! That's a LONG way down" effect
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
I for one welcome this advanced Plutonian technology.
So long as Emory remembers to label the levers this time.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Novels in the Dungeons & Dragons, Warcraft and of course Star Wars franchises continue to sell and sell enough to keep churning them out. Oh, you meant people of a younger age don't read good SF.
The BBC are reporting...
Damn you Brits with your faulty subject-verb agreement! The BBC is a group--a single item. Just because it is composed of many individuals does not mean it should take the plural verb inflection!
Surely you would agree that crumpet is singular, yes? Yet it, too, is made up of multiple entities (ingredients, molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, barristers, lorries, etc.). So where do you draw the line? I see no consistency. None! You'd think you invented the language the way you swagger about, making arbitrary and indefensible syntactic proclamations!
this technology might eventually be used for vision correction heretofore untouchable by traditional lenses, getting around things like retinal and corneal damage.
I think it's obvious what the first use should be - the same use that has made so many other hot new technologies a success: PORN!
I've been following this company for years. I hate to bitch about slow development (cause I'm the pot calling the kettle black), but they've been developing this thing for YEARS AND YEARS. After their IPO in 1996 I was really excited about it. Since then they've only managed the first initial nomad (really big and bulky) to this new model. 8 years and no color, no higher resolution.
Maybe I'm just too demanding...